“lips of cunning fell
The thrilling Delphic oracle.”
And yet, sometimes,
We should not mind if on our ear there fell
Some less of cunning, more of oracle.
It is Apollo shining in your face. O rare Contemporary, let us have
far-off heats. Give us the subtler, the heavenlier though fleeting
beauty, which passes through and through, and dwells not in the verse;
even pure water, which but reflects those tints which wine wears in its
grain. Let epic trade-winds blow, and cease this waltz of inspirations.
Let us oftener feel even the gentle southwest wind upon our cheeks
blowing from the Indian’s heaven. What though we lose a thousand
meteors from the sky, if skyey depths, if star-dust and undissolvable
nebulæ remain? What though we lose a thousand wise responses of the
oracle, if we may have instead some natural acres of Ionian earth?
Though we know well,
“That’t is not in the power of kings [or presidents] to raise
A spirit for verse that is not born thereto,
Nor are they born in every prince’s days”;
yet spite of all they sang in praise of their “Eliza’s reign,” we have
evidence that poets may be born and sing in _our_ day, in the
presidency of James K. Polk,
“And that the utmost powers of English rhyme,”
_Were not_ “within _her_ peaceful reign confined.”
The prophecy of the poet Daniel is already how much more than
fulfilled!
“And who in time knows whither we may vent
The treasure of our tongue? To what strange shores
This gain of our best glory shall be sent,
T’ enrich unknowing nations with our stores?
What worlds in th’ yet unformed occident,
May come refined with the accents that are ours.”
Enough has been said in these days of the charm of fluent writing. We
hear it complained of some works of genius, that they have fine
thoughts, but are irregular and have no flow. But even the mountain
peaks in the horizon are, to the eye of science, parts of one range. We
should consider that the flow of thought is more like a tidal wave than
a prone river, and is the result of a celestial influence, not of any
declivity in its channel. The river flows because it runs down hill,
and flows the faster the faster it descends. The reader who expects to
float down stream for the whole voyage, may well complain of nauseating
swells and choppings of the sea when his frail shore-craft gets amidst
the billows of the ocean stream, which flows as much to sun and moon as
lesser streams to it. But if we would appreciate the flow that is in
these books, we must expect to feel it rise from the page like an
exhalation, and wash away our critical brains like burr millstones,
flowing to higher levels above and behind ourselves. There is many a
book which ripples on like a freshet, and flows as glibly as a
mill-stream sucking under a causeway; and when their authors are in the
full tide of their discourse, Pythagoras and Plato and Jamblichus halt
beside them. Their long, stringy, slimy sentences are of that
consistency that they naturally flow and run together. They read as if
written for military men, for men of business, there is such a despatch
in them. Compared with these, the grave thinkers and philosophers seem
not to have got their swaddling-clothes off; they are slower than a
Roman army in its march, the rear camping to-night where the van camped
last night. The wise Jamblichus eddies and gleams like a watery slough.
“How many thousands never heard the name
Of Sidney, or of Spenser, or their books?
And yet brave fellows, and presume of fame,
And seem to bear down all the world with looks.”
The ready writer seizes the pen, and shouts, Forward! Alamo and
Fanning! and after rolls the tide of war. The very walls and fences
seem to travel. But the most rapid trot is no flow after all; and
thither, reader, you and I, at least, will not follow.
A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the
most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could
be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their
colors, or the heavens without their azure. The most attractive
sentences are, perhaps, not the wisest, but the surest and roundest.
They are spoken firmly and conclusively, as if the speaker had a right
to know what he says, and if not wise, they have at least been well
learned. Sir Walter Raleigh might well be studied if only for the
excellence of his style, for he is remarkable in the midst of so many
masters. There is a natural emphasis in his style, like a man’s tread,
and a breathing space between the sentences, which the best of modern
writing does not furnish. His chapters are like English parks, or say
rather like a Western forest, where the larger growth keeps down the
underwood, and one may ride on horseback through the openings. All the
distinguished writers of that period possess a greater vigor and
naturalness than the more modern,—for it is allowed to slander our own
time,—and when we read a quotation from one of them in the midst of a
modern author, we seem to have come suddenly upon a greener ground, a
greater depth and strength of soil. It is as if a green bough were laid
across the page, and we are refreshed as by the sight of fresh grass in
midwinter or early spring. You have constantly the warrant of life and
experience in what you read. The little that is said is eked out by
implication of the much that was done. The sentences are verdurous and
blooming as evergreen and flowers, because they are rooted in fact and
experience, but our false and florid sentence have only the tints of
flowers without their sap or roots. All men are really most attracted
by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in
imitation of this. They prefer to be misunderstood rather than to come
short of its exuberance. Hussein Effendi praised the epistolary style
of Ibrahim Pasha to the French traveller Botta, because of “the
difficulty of understanding it; there was,” he said, “but one person at
Jidda, who was capable of understanding and explaining the Pasha’s
correspondence.” A man’s whole life is taxed for the least thing well
done. It is its net result. Every sentence is the result of a long
probation. Where shall we look for standard English, but to the words
of a standard man? The word which is best said came nearest to not
being spoken at all, for it is cousin to a deed which the speaker could
have better done. Nay, almost it must have taken the place of a deed by
some urgent necessity, even by some misfortune, so that the truest
writer will be some captive knight, after all. And perhaps the fates
had such a design, when, having stored Raleigh so richly with the
substance of life and experience, they made him a fast prisoner, and
compelled him to make his words his deeds, and transfer to his
expression the emphasis and sincerity of his action.
Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of
proportion to the use they commonly serve. We are amused to read how
Ben Jonson engaged, that the dull masks with which the royal family and
nobility were to be entertained should be “grounded upon antiquity and
solid learning.” Can there be any greater reproach than an idle
learning? Learn to split wood, at least. The necessity of labor and
conversation with many men and things, to the scholar is rarely well
remembered; steady labor with the hands, which engrosses the attention
also, is unquestionably the best method of removing palaver and
sentimentality out of one’s style, both of speaking and writing. If he
has worked hard from morning till night, though he may have grieved
that he could not be watching the train of his thoughts during that
time, yet the few hasty lines which at evening record his day’s
experience will be more musical and true than his freest but idle fancy
could have furnished. Surely the writer is to address a world of
laborers, and such therefore must be his own discipline. He will not
idly dance at his work who has wood to cut and cord before nightfall in
the short days of winter; but every stroke will be husbanded, and ring
soberly through the wood; and so will the strokes of that scholar’s
pen, which at evening record the story of the day, ring soberly, yet
cheerily, on the ear of the reader, long after the echoes of his axe
have died away. The scholar may be sure that he writes the tougher
truth for the calluses on his palms. They give firmness to the
sentence. Indeed, the mind never makes a great and successful effort,
without a corresponding energy of the body. We are often struck by the
force and precision of style to which hard-working men, unpractised in
writing, easily attain when required to make the effort. As if
plainness, and vigor, and sincerity, the ornaments of style, were
better learned on the farm and in the workshop, than in the schools.
The sentences written by such rude hands are nervous and tough, like
hardened thongs, the sinews of the deer, or the roots of the pine. As
for the graces of expression, a great thought is never found in a mean
dress; but though it proceed from the lips of the Woloffs, the nine
Muses and the three Graces will have conspired to clothe it in fit
phrase. Its education has always been liberal, and its implied wit can
endow a college. The world, which the Greeks called Beauty, has been
made such by being gradually divested of every ornament which was not
fitted to endure. The Sibyl, “speaking with inspired mouth, smileless,
inornate, and unperfumed, pierces through centuries by the power of the
god.” The scholar might frequently emulate the propriety and emphasis
of the farmer’s call to his team, and confess that if that were written
it would surpass his labored sentences. Whose are the truly _labored_
sentences? From the weak and flimsy periods of the politician and
literary man, we are glad to turn even to the description of work, the
simple record of the month’s labor in the farmer’s almanac, to restore
our tone and spirits. A sentence should read as if its author, had he
held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and
straight to the end. The scholar requires hard and serious labor to
give an impetus to his thought. He will learn to grasp the pen firmly
so, and wield it gracefully and effectively, as an axe or a sword. When
we consider the weak and nerveless periods of some literary men, who
perchance in feet and inches come up to the standard of their race, and
are not deficient in girth also, we are amazed at the immense sacrifice
of thews and sinews. What! these proportions,—these bones,—and this
their work! Hands which could have felled an ox have hewed this fragile
matter which would not have tasked a lady’s fingers! Can this be a
stalwart man’s work, who has a marrow in his back and a tendon Achilles
in his heel? They who set up the blocks of Stonehenge did somewhat, if
they only laid out their strength for once, and stretched themselves.
Yet, after all, the truly efficient laborer will not crowd his day with
work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease
and leisure, and then do but what he loves best. He is anxious only
about the fruitful kernels of time. Though the hen should sit all day,
she could lay only one egg, and, besides, would not have picked up
materials for another. Let a man take time enough for the most trivial
deed, though it be but the paring of his nails. The buds swell
imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion, as if the short spring days
were an eternity.
Then spend an age in whetting thy desire,
Thou needs’t not _hasten_ if thou dost _stand fast_.
Some hours seem not to be occasion for any deed, but for resolves to
draw breath in. We do not directly go about the execution of the
purpose that thrills us, but shut our doors behind us and ramble with
prepared mind, as if the half were already done. Our resolution is
taking root or hold on the earth then, as seeds first send a shoot
downward which is fed by their own albumen, ere they send one upward to
the light.
There is a sort of homely truth and naturalness in some books which is
very rare to find, and yet looks cheap enough. There may be nothing
lofty in the sentiment, or fine in the expression, but it is careless
country talk. Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a
house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a
very high art. Some have this merit only. The scholar is not apt to
make his most familiar experience come gracefully to the aid of his
expression. Very few men can speak of Nature, for instance, with any
truth. They overstep her modesty, somehow or other, and confer no
favor. They do not speak a good word for her. Most cry better than they
speak, and you can get more nature out of them by pinching than by
addressing them. The surliness with which the woodchopper speaks of his
woods, handling them as indifferently as his axe, is better than the
mealy-mouthed enthusiasm of the lover of nature. Better that the
primrose by the river’s brim be a yellow primrose, and nothing more,
than that it be something less. Aubrey relates of Thomas Fuller that
his was “a very working head, insomuch that, walking and meditating
before dinner, he would eat up a penny loaf, not knowing that he did
it. His natural memory was very great, to which he added the art of
memory. He would repeat to you forwards and backwards all the signs
from Ludgate to Charing Cross.” He says of Mr. John Hales, that, “He
loved Canarie,” and was buried “under an altar monument of black
marble—— with a too long epitaph”; of Edmund Halley, that he “at
sixteen could make a dial, and then, he said, he thought himself a
brave fellow”; of William Holder, who wrote a book upon his curing one
Popham who was deaf and dumb, “he was beholding to no author; did only
consult with nature.” For the most part, an author consults only with
all who have written before him upon a subject, and his book is but the
advice of so many. But a good book will never have been forestalled,
but the topic itself will in one sense be new, and its author, by
consulting with nature, will consult not only with those who have gone
before, but with those who may come after. There is always room and
occasion enough for a true book on any subject; as there is room for
more light the brightest day and more rays will not interfere with the
first.
We thus worked our way up this river, gradually adjusting our thoughts
to novelties, beholding from its placid bosom a new nature and new
works of men, and, as it were with increasing confidence, finding
nature still habitable, genial, and propitious to us; not following any
beaten path, but the windings of the river, as ever the nearest way for
us. Fortunately we had no business in this country. The Concord had
rarely been a river, or _rivus_, but barely _fluvius_, or between
_fluvius_ and _lacus_. This Merrimack was neither _rivus_ nor _fluvius_
nor _lacus_, but rather _amnis_ here, a gently swelling and stately
rolling flood approaching the sea. We could even sympathize with its
buoyant tide, going to seek its fortune in the ocean, and, anticipating
the time when “being received within the plain of its freer water,” it
should “beat the shores for banks,”—
“campoque recepta
Liberioris aquæ, pro ripis litora pulsant.”
At length we doubled a low shrubby islet, called Rabbit Island,
subjected alternately to the sun and to the waves, as desolate as if it
lay some leagues within the icy sea, and found ourselves in a narrower
part of the river, near the sheds and yards for picking the stone known
as the Chelmsford granite, which is quarried in Westford and the
neighboring towns. We passed Wicasuck Island, which contains seventy
acres or more, on our right, between Chelmsford and Tyngsborough. This
was a favorite residence of the Indians. According to the History of
Dunstable, “About 1663, the eldest son of Passaconaway [Chief of the
Penacooks] was thrown into jail for a debt of £45, due to John Tinker,
by one of his tribe, and which he had promised verbally should be paid.
To relieve him from his imprisonment, his brother Wannalancet and
others, who owned Wicasuck Island, sold it and paid the debt.” It was,
however, restored to the Indians by the General Court in 1665. After
the departure of the Indians in 1683, it was granted to Jonathan Tyng
in payment for his services to the colony, in maintaining a garrison at
his house. Tyng’s house stood not far from Wicasuck Falls. Gookin, who,
in his Epistle Dedicatory to Robert Boyle, apologizes for presenting
his “matter clothed in a wilderness dress,” says that on the breaking
out of Philip’s war in 1675, there were taken up by the Christian
Indians and the English in Marlborough, and sent to Cambridge, seven
“Indians belonging to Narragansett, Long Island, and Pequod, who had
all been at work about seven weeks with one Mr. Jonathan Tyng, of
Dunstable, upon Merrimack River; and, hearing of the war, they reckoned
with their master, and getting their wages, conveyed themselves away
without his privity, and, being afraid, marched secretly through the
woods, designing to go to their own country.” However, they were
released soon after. Such were the hired men in those days. Tyng was
the first permanent settler of Dunstable, which then embraced what is
now Tyngsborough and many other towns. In the winter of 1675, in
Philip’s war, every other settler left the town, but “he,” says the
historian of Dunstable, “fortified his house; and, although ‘obliged to
send to Boston for his food,’ sat himself down in the midst of his
savage enemies, alone, in the wilderness, to defend his home. Deeming
his position an important one for the defence of the frontiers, in
February, 1676, he petitioned the Colony for aid,” humbly showing, as
his petition runs, that, as he lived “in the uppermost house on
Merrimac river, lying open to ye enemy, yet being so seated that it is,
as it were, a watch-house to the neighboring towns,” he could render
important service to his country if only he had some assistance, “there
being,” he said, “never an inhabitant left in the town but myself.”
Wherefore he requests that their “Honors would be pleased to order him
_three or four men_ to help garrison his said house,” which they did.
But methinks that such a garrison would be weakened by the addition of
a man.
“Make bandog thy scout watch to bark at a thief,
Make courage for life, to be capitain chief;
Make trap-door thy bulwark, make bell to begin,
Make gunstone and arrow show who is within.”
Thus he earned the title of first permanent settler. In 1694 a law was
passed “that every settler who deserted a town for fear of the Indians
should forfeit all his rights therein.” But now, at any rate, as I have
frequently observed, a man may desert the fertile frontier territories
of truth and justice, which are the State’s best lands, for fear of far
more insignificant foes, without forfeiting any of his civil rights
therein. Nay, townships are granted to deserters, and the General
Court, as I am sometimes inclined to regard it, is but a deserters’
camp itself.
As we rowed along near the shore of Wicasuck Island, which was then
covered with wood, in order to avoid the current, two men, who looked
as if they had just run out of Lowell, where they had been waylaid by
the Sabbath, meaning to go to Nashua, and who now found themselves in
the strange, natural, uncultivated, and unsettled part of the globe
which intervenes, full of walls and barriers, a rough and uncivil place
to them, seeing our boat moving so smoothly up the stream, called out
from the high bank above our heads to know if we would take them as
passengers, as if this were the street they had missed; that they might
sit and chat and drive away the time, and so at last find themselves in
Nashua. This smooth way they much preferred. But our boat was crowded
with necessary furniture, and sunk low in the water, and moreover
required to be worked, for even _it_ did not progress against the
stream without effort; so we were obliged to deny them passage. As we
glided away with even sweeps, while the fates scattered oil in our
course, the sun now sinking behind the alders on the distant shore, we
could still see them far off over the water, running along the shore
and climbing over the rocks and fallen trees like insects,—for they did
not know any better than we that they were on an island,—the
unsympathizing river ever flowing in an opposite direction; until,
having reached the entrance of the island brook, which they had
probably crossed upon the locks below, they found a more effectual
barrier to their progress. They seemed to be learning much in a little
time. They ran about like ants on a burning brand, and once more they
tried the river here, and once more there, to see if water still indeed
was not to be walked on, as if a new thought inspired them, and by some
peculiar disposition of the limbs they could accomplish it. At length
sober common sense seemed to have resumed its sway, and they concluded
that what they had so long heard must be true, and resolved to ford the
shallower stream. When nearly a mile distant we could see them
stripping off their clothes and preparing for this experiment; yet it
seemed likely that a new dilemma would arise, they were so
thoughtlessly throwing away their clothes on the wrong side of the
stream, as in the case of the countryman with his corn, his fox, and
his goose, which had to be transported one at a time. Whether they got
safely through, or went round by the locks, we never learned. We could
not help being struck by the seeming, though innocent indifference of
Nature to these men’s necessities, while elsewhere she was equally
serving others. Like a true benefactress, the secret of her service is
unchangeableness. Thus is the busiest merchant, though within sight of
his Lowell, put to pilgrim’s shifts, and soon comes to staff and scrip
and scallop shell.
We, too, who held the middle of the stream, came near experiencing a
pilgrim’s fate, being tempted to pursue what seemed a sturgeon or
larger fish, for we remembered that this was the Sturgeon River, its
dark and monstrous back alternately rising and sinking in mid-stream.
We kept falling behind, but the fish kept his back well out, and did
not dive, and seemed to prefer to swim against the stream, so, at any
rate, he would not escape us by going out to sea. At length, having got
as near as was convenient, and looking out not to get a blow from his
tail, now the bow-gunner delivered his charge, while the stern-man held
his ground. But the halibut-skinned monster, in one of these
swift-gliding pregnant moments, without ever ceasing his bobbing up and
down, saw fit, without a chuckle or other prelude, to proclaim himself
a huge imprisoned spar, placed there as a buoy, to warn sailors of
sunken rocks. So, each casting some blame upon the other, we withdrew
quickly to safer waters.
The Scene-shifter saw fit here to close the drama, of this day, without
regard to any unities which we mortals prize. Whether it might have
proved tragedy, or comedy, or tragi-comedy, or pastoral, we cannot
tell. This Sunday ended by the going down of the sun, leaving us still
on the waves. But they who are on the water enjoy a longer and brighter
twilight than they who are on the land, for here the water, as well as
the atmosphere, absorbs and reflects the light, and some of the day
seems to have sunk down into the waves. The light gradually forsook the
deep water, as well as the deeper air, and the gloaming came to the
fishes as well as to us, and more dim and gloomy to them, whose day is
a perpetual twilight, though sufficiently bright for their weak and
watery eyes. Vespers had already rung in many a dim and watery chapel
down below, where the shadows of the weeds were extended in length over
the sandy floor. The vespertinal pout had already begun to flit on
leathern fin, and the finny gossips withdrew from the fluvial street to
creeks and coves, and other private haunts, excepting a few of stronger
fin, which anchored in the stream, stemming the tide even in their
dreams. Meanwhile, like a dark evening cloud, we were wafted over the
cope of their sky, deepening the shadows on their deluged fields.
Having reached a retired part of the river where it spread out to sixty
rods in width, we pitched our tent on the east side, in Tyngsborough,
just above some patches of the beach plum, which was now nearly ripe,
where the sloping bank was a sufficient pillow, and with the bustle of
sailors making the land, we transferred such stores as were required
from boat to tent, and hung a lantern to the tent-pole, and so our
house was ready. With a buffalo spread on the grass, and a blanket for
our covering our bed was soon made. A fire crackled merrily before the
entrance, so near that we could tend it without stepping abroad, and
when we had supped, we put out the blaze, and closed the door, and with
the semblance of domestic comfort, sat up to read the Gazetteer, to
learn our latitude and longitude, and write the journal of the voyage,
or listened to the wind and the rippling of the river till sleep
overtook us. There we lay under an oak on the bank of the stream, near
to some farmer’s cornfield, getting sleep, and forgetting where we
were; a great blessing, that we are obliged to forget our enterprises
every twelve hours. Minks, muskrats, meadow-mice, woodchucks,
squirrels, skunks, rabbits, foxes, and weasels, all inhabit near, but
keep very close while you are there. The river sucking and eddying away
all night down toward the marts and the seaboard, a great wash and
freshet, and no small enterprise to reflect on. Instead of the Scythian
vastness of the Billerica night, and its wild musical sounds, we were
kept awake by the boisterous sport of some Irish laborers on the
railroad, wafted to us over the water, still unwearied and unresting on
this seventh day, who would not have done with whirling up and down the
track with ever increasing velocity and still reviving shouts, till
late in the night.
One sailor was visited in his dreams this night by the Evil Destinies,
and all those powers that are hostile to human life, which constrain
and oppress the minds of men, and make their path seem difficult and
narrow, and beset with dangers, so that the most innocent and worthy
enterprises appear insolent and a tempting of fate, and the gods go not
with us. But the other happily passed a serene and even ambrosial or
immortal night, and his sleep was dreamless, or only the atmosphere of
pleasant dreams remained, a happy natural sleep until the morning; and
his cheerful spirit soothed and reassured his brother, for whenever
they meet, the Good Genius is sure to prevail.